Women in Science

Women in Science

In this newly revised twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed writer and journalist Vivian Gornick interviews famous and lesser-known scientists, compares their experiences then and now, and shows that, although not much has changed in the world of science, what is different is women’s expectations that they can and will succeed.

Everything from the disparaging comments by Harvard’s then-president to government reports and media coverage has focused on the ways in which women supposedly can’t do science. Gornick’s original interviews show how deep and severe discrimination against women was back then in all scientific fields. Her new interviews, with some of the same women she spoke to twenty-five years ago, provide a fresh description of the hard times and great successes these women have experienced.

"Gornick is a gifted writer and her poetic descriptions of the excitement of scientific research and the passion of those who work as scientists is inspirational. . . . This is an important book that, if anyone needed evidence, demonstrates that true equality for women, particularly in the field of scientific research, still seems so far away." —The Sydney Morning Herald

"[Women in Science] opens the discussion about women's diverse problems and ambitions in science." —New York Times Book Review

"It is women as subject, the women in science, rather than the women of science, that Vivian Gornick treats in a series of vignettes based on her extensive interviews with women of various ages and status in American academic life." —The New York Review of Books